State quietly retested truckers

Laurie Cohen and Gary MarxTribune Staff Writers

When then-Secretary of State George Ryan ran for governor in 1998, he repeatedly asserted that he had no evidence of wrongdoing at a Chicago-area driver's licensing facility that had become the focus of a federal probe into a bribery scheme.

But a year earlier, top Ryan aides were so alarmed that unqualified truck drivers were being issued licenses by corrupt employees at the McCook facility that they quietly ordered 42 truckers to retake their licensing exams, according to internal documents obtained by the Tribune.

Most of the truckers forfeited their licenses rather than take new tests, said Dave Druker, a spokesman for Jesse White, Ryan's successor as secretary of state. Of the drivers who took the exams a second time, only three passed and were able to keep their trucking licenses, he said.

While Ryan has continued to maintain that his secretary of state investigators could not sufficiently substantiate allegations of corruption at McCook to pursue criminal charges against employees, the documents show that his aides believed the evidence was strong enough to warrant unusual measures to safeguard the public.

The low passing rate among the drivers who were ordered to take new tests also bolstered allegations of test-fixing, which were brought to secretary of state internal investigators by two whistle-blowers at the McCook facility.

When allegations of corruption at the west suburban facility publicly surfaced in April 1998 as Ryan was campaigning for governor, the then-secretary of state brushed them aside, saying that "we haven't been able to come up with anything other than a lot of political charges and charges by people who haven't given us enough facts to do anything about it."

But more than a year earlier, documents show, a secretary of state investigator assigned to the McCook case wrote a memorandum to a top official in Ryan's office identifying 42 drivers who were suspected of receiving "unauthorized assistance" and "may be lacking the basic qualifications needed for obtaining" a trucking license.

Dennis Culloton, a Ryan spokesman, said Ryan's comments about McCook in 1998 related only to possible criminal charges against employees and were not intended to suggest that there was no wrongdoing at the facility.

"The issue of retesting is separate from any questions (Ryan) may have gotten at the time about criminal allegations," Culloton said. "They're two separate issues."

Culloton said he did not know whether the retesting, which took place in April 1997, was ever made public by Ryan's office.

The first widely publicized retesting of truckers came in September 1998, after five people, including two top managers, were indicted on charges of running a licenses-for-bribes scheme at the Melrose Park facility. About 915 truckers have been ordered to retake licensing exams as a result of the scandal.

So far, 30 individuals have been charged in the two-year-long federal probe known as Operation Safe Road, and 22 have pleaded guilty, including two high-ranking officials of the McCook facility. About $170,000 in bribe money ended up in Ryan's campaign coffers, federal prosecutors have said.

Ryan has denied any wrongdoing and has repeatedly said his secretary of state's office aggressively sought to root out corruption.

Allegations of test-fixing at the McCook facility came to the attention of internal investigators in 1993, when a trucker told them a McCook examiner provided him with the correct answers to obtain his trucking license, according to investigative documents. Internal investigators closed the case after the trucker, suffering from leukemia, refused to cooperate.

Three years later, internal investigators launched another probe at McCook after two whistle-blowers, Tony Berlin and Tammy Raynor, began passing on evidence of alleged wrongdoing. The evidence included the names of truckers who they believed had acquired their licenses in exchange for bribes.

The 1996 McCook investigation culminated in an undercover operation that failed because the agent's cover was blown. Secretary of state officials determined in December 1996 that there was not enough evidence to seek criminal charges against Marion Seibel, a key target of the probe, according to internal investigative documents.

Seibel has since pleaded guilty to a racketeering charge stemming from the federal investigation and has been sentenced to an 18-month prison term.

On March 20, 1997, investigator Keith Lake wrote a memo to Matthew Sneyd, deputy director of the driver services department, that identified 42 truck drivers who were suspected of cheating on their exams. Five days later, Sneyd ordered that the 42 drivers be retested, according to a memo obtained by the Tribune. Copies of Sneyd's memo went to his boss, Michael Chamness, director of driver services, and Mark Sniegowski, the top administrator of driver services in the Chicago area.

Efforts to contact Sneyd for comment on Wednesday were unsuccessful.

Of the 42 truckers who were required to retake the exam, 25 of them forfeited their licenses rather than submit to new testing, seven voluntarily surrendered their truck driver's licenses and obtained regular driver's licenses, five failed and two others had moved out of state and never took the tests, according to Druker.

Abuses at McCook emerged as a campaign issue because of a lawsuit filed against a Chicago truck driver involved in a 1994 Wisconsin crash that killed six children in the Willis family. The trucker, Ricardo Guzman, had obtained his license at McCook.